A Sane Cheerleader
by darkrunner
Summary: Persevereshipping Anzu x Otogi for contest. Anzu helps get Otogi out of a bad date. Short story, short summary.


A/N: Persevereshipping Otogi x Anzu for season 4, round 6 of Computerfreak101's contest. This is quite possibly, the best hard pairing I've ever had to write. Not that I have any plotbunnies, oh no. But it's between two STRAIGHT people (glares at yaoi ships) who are the same age, who hang out together, and can actually plausibly get together, only they never have pretty much any interaction ever. I love it. Thank you, Compy! (now can we get some regal?)

Disclaimer: It's like what Gregory Maguire does, only I'm not making any money off of it, and I didn't pay to use the characters.

* * *

"Otogi-kun?" Anzu called to Otogi from across the room. He didn't hear her, and trudged toward the too-brightly colored booths lining the walls of burger World. Anzu strode after him.

"Hey, Otogi-kun!" she said louder. The downtrodden boy jumped and turned around nervously.

"Oh, Anzu," he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her. "It's just you."

"Who were you expecting?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Erm, no one," Otogi said quickly.

"Right," Anzu said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "What's her name?"

"Takami," he admitted.

"What?" Anzu, said surprised. "Kokurano's fangirl?"

"The guy that did the predictions, yeah. Apparently, we're destined to be together."

"You sound so enthused," Anzu smirked.

Otogi shrugged uncomfortably, and was about to say something when the door opened behind him.

"Ryuuji!" said an entirely too high-pitched voice. Anzu didn't even have to look up. She could tell from the way Otogi's face fell that his date had arrived.

"Wish me luck," he mumbled.

"You're breaking up with her?" Anzu whispered as she approached.

"Kinda hard to do on the first date," Otogi whispered back. Anzu blushed at her assumption. Otogi silently escorted his date to the booth, while she started talking about things Anzu was sure he had no interest in.

"Hey, Mazaki!" a gruff voice called from behind the counter. "Your shift's done in twenty minutes. You can talk to your boyfriend then."

"Y-yes sir," Anzu replied quickly as she headed for the kitchen, not bothering to correct him.

Twenty minutes later, she reappeared in front of the counters, hat tucked away and coat covering the majority of the ugly uniform. She looked over at Otogi and his 'date'. The former looked extremely uncomfortable, and Anzu couldn't blame him. Takami had a reputation of being both mindlessly boring and talkative. And from the way his mouth was opening and closing without a sound, Anzu guessed Otogi hadn't gotten a word in edgewise at all. He was absolutely miserable, and Anzu felt for him.

Which was part of the reason why she decided to head towards his table rather than the much more appealing door.

"You know, I really should be going," Otogi was saying when Anzu was within earshot. "I'm meeting with someone--"

"Ryuuji, I thought this was a date!" Takami pouted. "You said--"

"I said I'd talk with you, but I don't think this is going to work out..." Otogi said hesitantly. He hated this part. They never worked out. Sure, they were nice and all, but no one was right for him, and he wished they'd all quit throwing themselves at him. He was genuinely interested in finding a nice girl, but all the ones he'd been with so far were just crazy fangirls or cheerleaders. If he could at least meet a _sane_ cheerleader... Takami started going off about how much Otogi had begged her to go out and now he was leaving, and some other nonsense that he wasn't paying attention to.

"Ot--Ryuuji!" A different female voice called his name. Both Otogi and Takami looked up, Otogi surprised and Takami angry. Anzu was cheerily walked toward the both of them, waving at Otogi.

"A-anzu," Otogi tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. "How are you?"

"Who is this?" Takami demanded angrily. Otogi looked from his 'date' to his 'girlfriend'. Normally he wouldn't dream of doing something like this. But normally he wouldn't have the chance, and this girl was just so... wrong for him. Otogi looked up at Anzu and grinned.

"My girlfriend."

For the first time that evening, Takami's mouth was hanging open without any sound coming out.

Anzu grabbed Otogi's hand and pulled him out of the booth. Takami continued to stare dumbly at the both of them as they calmly exited.

Once safely outside, they both burst out laughing.

"Anzu, that was amazing," Otogi said, glancing over his shoulder at Burger World. Takami was exiting the shop from the side entrance. "I didn't think I'd ever get rid of her."

"What were you going to do, sit there all night?" She joked.

"No," Otogi smirked. "Just a couple hours."

Anzu laughed again. "As amusing as that would have been to see, this was more fun."

"What, you don't go around rescuing people from bad dates all the time?" Otogi joked.

"Are you kidding me?" she said as they started home. "I can't pull this kind of thing off with the other guys. Yugi never goes out, Jou'd be took thick to figure out what I was doing, Honda refuses to see anyone but Miho, and Bakura's too shy."

"And I have to admit, I don't think any of them could have played your part, either."

"Well, if you got them to, it would get the girls off your back," Anzu said evilly. Otogi looked disgusted.

"I'll take the bad dates over that," he said, repulsed. They slowed down as Otogi reached his street.

"See you tomorrow," Anzu said with a little wave. Otogi looked down his street and back at Anzu.

"What?"

"I'll take a different way home," Otogi said, jogging slightly to catch up with her.

* * *

A/N: Kokurano was a character in the manga and presumably in the first series anime. He was a fake psychic, and had a throng of fangirls. He had a thing for Anzu, and lost to Yugi in a game of "pull the pieces of paper out from under the bottle of chloroform".  
I was going to write a longer fic. But as my flippantshipping from last season proved, longer doesn't always get me through a round. So I left it short and simple.


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